yppasswdd Daemon

Purpose

Receives and executes requests from the yppasswd command.

Syntax

rpc.yppasswdd FileName [ -nogecos ] [ -nopw ] [ -noshell ] [ -r | -m [ Argument... ] ]

Description

The yppasswdd daemon is a server that receives and executes requests for new passwords from the yppasswd command. These requests require the daemon to verify the user's old password and change it. The daemon changes the password in the file you specify in the FileName parameter, which has the same format as the /etc/passwd file.

To make it possible to update the Network Information Services (NIS) password map from remote machines, the yppasswdd daemon must be running on the master server that contains the NIS password map.

Note: The yppasswdd daemon is not run by default, nor can it be started up from the inetd daemon like other Remote Procedure Call (RPC) daemons.

The yppasswdd daemon can be started and stopped with the following System Resource Controller (SRC) commands:

startsrc -s yppasswdd

stopsrc -s yppasswdd

Flags

Item	Description
-m	Runs the make command using the makefile in the /var/yp directory. This adds the new or changed password to the NIS password map. Any arguments that follow the -m flag are passed to the make command.
-nogecos	Indicates the server will not accept changes for gecos information from the yppasswd command.
-nopw	Indicates that the server will not accept password changes from the yppasswdd command.
-noshell	Indicates the server will not accept changes for user shells from the yppasswd command.
-r	Directly updates the /var/yp/domainname/passwd.byname and /var/yp/domainname/passwd.byuid database files on the Master server as well as any Slave servers with new or changed passwords. This option is faster than the -m flag because the make command is not run. The -r flag is useful when the database files are large (several thousand entries or more).

Note: The System Resource Controller (SRC) starts the yppasswdd daemon with the -m flag specified by default. Use the chssys command to change the default to the -r flag.

Example

To propagate updated passwords immediately, invoke the yppasswdd daemon as follows:

startsrc -s yppasswdd

Files

Item	Description
/etc/inetd.conf	Defines how the inetd daemon handles Internet service requests.
/var/yp/Makefile	Contains rules for making NIS maps.
/etc/rc.nfs	Contains the startup script for the NFS and NIS daemons.
/etc/security/passwd	Stores password information.